Cooking appliances with a steam generator, in particular steam cookers, provide a user with the possibility of preparing the cooking product in a particularly gentle manner by means of steam. A plurality of methods for steam generation has become known to provide steam in the cooking chamber.
During internal steam generation, water is introduced into the cooking chamber and heated on an evaporation surface, generally on the cooking chamber base, and evaporated. External steam generators, on the other hand, produce steam outside the cooking chamber and do not introduce any water, but only steam, into the cooking chamber.
Water has to be fed to the steam generator or the respective evaporation surface depending on need in both types of steam generation. Inter alia a fixed water connection on the cooking appliance is suitable for this purpose, which connection can supply the steam generator with water at all times, according to need. However, it is not always possible to produce a fixed water connection, and in addition said connection is not always desired.
Furthermore, cooking appliances are known which comprise a removable water tank for the steam generator. Water for steam generation can be stored in a water tank of this type. In this case, a water tank of this type should ideally be able to receive so much water that at least one complete cooking process can be carried out with the stored water quantity. Otherwise, the user would have to refill water during the cooking process, which can impair the operating convenience and, in the worst case, even the efficiency and/or the cooking result.
A disadvantage of a sufficiently large water tank, however, is that said tank can be provided on the cooking appliance only with great difficulty in structural terms, meaning that it is difficult to adhere to predetermined external dimensions of the cooking appliance and/or of the cooking chamber.